Triple-A development in significant decline, EA claims

The number of studios working on triple-A games is at its lowest point for over a decade, EA’s chief creative director Richard Hilleman has claimed.

“What is true today is that there are fewer triple-A games being built than at the same point in the previous generation,” he says in a recently published DICE Europe whitepaper.

“I’ve done some calculations that say there were about 125 teams in the industry worldwide working on what I’d call a triple-A game on a console, and that was seven or eight years ago.

“That number today is well south of 30; probably in the 25 range. What’s interesting is that, if you look at the composition of those teams, the numbers are exactly the same: those 125 teams became 25; the size of the teams increased by a factor of four.

“This has everything to do with the standard definition to HD change. If you look at the math, that change is about content – richly about content – and as we evolved, our costs went substantially up. And the number of people on teams with that kind of vision went up by necessity.

“I don’t see that kind of content-oriented change coming in this next generation of platforms. As a result, I think we were on a path that made me nervous, but it seems to have stabilized.”

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